Added previous and next keyboard shortcuts to iTunes. These are mapped to whatever strange icon is on the F3 and F4 keys on my Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic keyboard

Installed Keep Drive Spinning to keep my USB2 HDD online and spinning. I found that macOS would sometimes pause for a bit while waiting on the drive to wake up. I'd first tried Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Put hard disks to sleep when possible but that didn't work.